Domestic Politics

Domestic politics were still strongly dominated by long-standing President José Eduardo dos Santos and the ruling ‘Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola’ (mpla). Opposition parties felt even more ‘asphyxiated’ in the National Assembly than in the previous two years of the current legislative period, and complained that all their initiatives to hold the Executive accountable were voted down by the mpla’s absolute majority, or quashed by the courts. Demands that parliamentary debates be broadcast on television in their entirety, as stipulated by the 2010 Constitution, were also blocked. In June, opposition parties ‘União Nacional pela Independência Total de Angola’ (unita), ‘Convergência Ampla de Salvação de Angola – Coligação Eleitoral’ (casa-ce), ‘Partido de Renovação Social’ (prs), and ‘Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola’ (fnla) staged a walkout from parliament in protest against this, and were duly lambasted by the state press for their “anti-democratic attitude”. The vice president of the mpla bench, João Melo, while recognising the walkout as a form of democratic protest, said such “empty chair politics” were bound to fail, and that it would eventually be confirmed that the mpla was right.

In September, unita tried, also in vain, to oppose a revision of the nationality law, claiming the draft bill gave President dos Santos unconstitutional powers. The bill stipulated that the president could grant Angolan nationality by decree, for example, to foreigners who had rendered or were expected to provide “outstanding services” to the state. However, even before the passing of the law, the government had ample discretion in granting nationality. Indeed, in May, António Famtosonghiu Sampo Menezes, holder of an Angolan diplomatic passport, was blacklisted by the us Treasury for providing money and equipment to the Zimbabwean Central Intelligence Organisation. Sampo Menezes, as it was revealed, was a Chinese national by the name of Xu Jinghua ‘Sam Pa’, and the head of the Chinese International Fund, a dominant player in the Angolan construction market, and president of China Sonangol International Holding Ltd, a Hong-Kong registered company associated with Angolan Vice-President Manuel Vicente.

Thus, dos Santos’ dominance over all branches of government continued. In May, he nominated João Lourenço as new defence minister. Lourenço, an old-time party member and military general, had been secretary-general of the mpla from 1999 but fell from grace in 2006. His ‘rehabilitation’ was commented on in Angola as being a means to put pressure on Vice President Vicente by re-opening the question of the succession to dos Santos, and to quell discontent within the army about the lack of leadership exercised by the previous defence minister, Cândido Pereira Van-Dúnem. Alternative interpretations said building up Lourenço as future vice president under Vicente that would meet the mpla’s approval was a means for dos Santos to secure the position of Vicente, who was still unpopular with the party, as his appointed successor. Generally, dos Santos was seen as trying to neutralise critical voices from the mpla’s ‘Old Guard’ by nominating them as provincial governors, and replacing them in the party leadership with his allies.

In September, dos Santos also dismissed the governor of Luanda, Bento Sebastião Bento, replacing him with Graciano Francisco Domingos. However, Angolan commentators said this change of personnel was unlikely to resolve the capital’s challenges, and that the root cause of these problems was the mode of governance, which was characterised by strong and recurring interference from the central government.

In October, the mpla youth wing, jmpla, held its congress, at the margins of which its secretary-general Sérgio Luther Rescova claimed that “substituting the mpla in its leadership of the country would mean substituting the people”, further underlining the sense of entitlement prevalent in the ruling party. Rescova also denied that the jmpla gave out free alcohol to encourage people to attend its rallies, or that people joined the party for opportunities for personal, financial betterment.

Finally, the mpla’s 5th Extraordinary Congress took place in Luanda on 4–6 December. Dos Santos had previously announced that no party leadership mandates would be renewed at the congress, thereby quelling potential discussions about his succession. Thus the congress was mainly self-congratulatory in tone, with mpla luminaries lauding the path of progress and international recognition the country had embarked upon under dos Santos’ wise leadership. However, such sentiments of supremacy were interlaced with some paranoia, exacerbated by the poor performance of the national economy during the year. In the run-up to the congress, the mpla’s provincial first secretary, Bento Bento, said on 15 November that unita was preparing “violent demonstrations” against the party and its leader and asked mpla militants to “close ranks” around dos Santos. On 17 November, Minister of Interior Ângelo Veiga Tavares recommended “firmness and redoubled vigilance” against “repeated veiled” attempts to overthrow the democratic and constitutional order, including the “deliberate negative usage” of the Constitution and the law. And mpla Secretary for Peripheral and Rural Mobilisation Bento ‘Kangamba’ dos Santos (President dos Santos’ nephew by marriage) also appealed for civic and democratic order, and for taking a stand against citizens of other political formations, as well as for “insults and confusion” to be ignored, as “patriotism, unity among Angolans [. . .] and mutual respect” stood above all.

Corruption remained a dominant issue: in January, Minister of Interior Ângelo Tavares Veiga dismissed the entire directorate of the Immigration Office (‘Serviço de Migração e Estrangeiros’, sme) for corruption. Investigations revealed that the sme directorate had issued over 14,000 work visas at a charge of between $ 5,000 and $ 15,000 over the period of a year, netting revenues of $ 90 m, which remained unaccounted for. This was only one of the examples that emerged during the year, with high-level corruption cases coming to the fore – most spectacularly in late April, when dos Santos authorised a sovereign guarantee of $ 5.7 bn to Angola’s second-largest commercial bank, Banco Espírito Santo Angola (besa), to cover the bank’s loans portfolio, after investigations revealed that 70% of the $ 5.9 bn loans on its books were irrecoverable ‘bad loans’. Subsequent inquiries revealed that besa’s former ceo, Álvaro Sobrinho, had very liberally given generous loans to the mpla elite, without any securities, including allegedly $ 800 m to the president’s sister, Marta dos Santos. When dos Santos tried to exert some pressure on the debtors to repay the loans, mpla Vice President Roberto de Almeida was quoted on Angolan news site ‘Club-K’ as having thought the $ 10 m loan he had received for property development was a gift, which he had no intention of repaying. However, unita queried the legality of the sovereign guarantee, pointing out that the amount exceeded the $ 2.4 m cap enshrined in the law. Ultimately, the crisis was prevented from spreading when the government first put besa under administration by the National Bank, then allowed Angolan investors including state oil company Sonangol to buy out the bank, thus ultimately nationalising the bank through the backdoor, and safeguarding the investment interests of the ruling elite. Even after the takeover by Sonangol, politically connected companies, such as Grupo Geni, owned by general ‘Dino’ and Isabel dos Santos, as well as Portmill, general Kopelipa’s investment holding, remained major shareholders.

In an unrelated case in April, Dutch oil company sbm Offshore revealed it had paid $ 22.7 m in ‘commissions’ to Angolan officials between 2007 and 2011 in exchange for oil concessions. Less publicly, in May, Oil Minister José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos also authorised Sonangol to sell 10% of its 50% share in an oil block to an Angolan private company called Prodoil. As investigative news site ‘Maka Angola’ revealed, Prodoil was owned by a holding owned again by Marta dos Santos and two of her sons. In August, ‘Global Witness’ also revealed that multinational oil companies had since 2012 donated $ 175 m from their corporate social responsibility accounts to Sonangol’s ‘Research and Technology Centre’, with commitments to disburse an equal amount again by 2016, though the Centre was nowhere near to being in existence at the time of the report.

Opposition mps deplored the fact that prisons were overflowing with “chicken thieves”, while those who stole “millions from the treasury” remained unpunished, and condemned a culture of impunity and corruption in the judiciary and police force. A judge who sentenced several police officers in February for earlier extra-legal killings was transferred to the eastern Lunda Sul province with his salary payments suspended for three months.

The year saw a worsening climate for human rights and freedom of speech. In February, Queirós Anastácio Chiluvia, the adjunct director of ‘Rádio Despertar’, a broadcaster affiliated with opposition party unita, was detained in Cacuaco while trying to report on the beating up of detainees inside the municipal police headquarters. Following three days in detention, Chiluvia faced a summary judgment and was sentenced to six months’ conditional detention for “disrespect, libel, and defamation” and “illegal practice of the profession” of journalist. This was indicative of the pressure put on ‘Despertar’, which together with the Catholic Church’s ‘Rádio Ecclésia’ remained one of the few independent media outlets. Most radio and television stations, as well as newspapers, remained either state-owned, or under the control of regime-affiliated private investors. This climate of censorship was not limited to criticism of the government, however: in March, a ‘Despertar’ journalist said he had been prohibited from inviting two guests to discuss the internal failings of unita.

Overall, it was mainly government critics and opponents who faced severe and swift repression. In June, 19 school teachers in Huíla province were detained for three days following a demonstration calling for better pay and training. The strike was ended after two months, as teachers wanted to avoid the cancellation of the entire academic year, though the teachers’ union said not many of their demands had been heard. Slum clearances with forced evictions and housing demolitions continued in central Luanda, as well as in the provincial capitals of Benguela and Lubango. In April, for example, residents of the Cacuaco municipality of Luanda barricaded the main thoroughfares in protest against the lack of notice and excessive violence of the authorities in demolishing their houses. In the countryside, locals also denounced the illegal expropriation of plots of land by mpla leaders. The persecution of female street vendors, or ‘zungueiras’, continued, with numerous reports of arbitrary detentions and demands for ‘fines’ in exchange for their release. When youth protesters called for a demonstration in support of the ‘zungueiras’ in March, the governor of Luanda promised to meet with the street vendors, and said President dos Santos had suspended the police officers responsible with immediate effect, after which the demonstration was called off.

Subsequent youth protests throughout the year, however, were swiftly repressed by the police, who routinely rounded up from a few dozen to over 150 protestors at a time, detained them in police vans, beat them up, and then released them some 150–200 km outside the city limits. On 22 and 23 November, a rally calling for dos Santos’ resignation was violently broken up in Luanda. Student activist Laurinda Gouveia was detained by the police and beaten for two hours with iron bars, cudgels, electric cables and, in one instance, a mobile phone charger. Other activists were also thrashed with steel cables and truncheons, and released outside the city limits with their phones and money ‘confiscated’. Similar violent repression also took place in other provinces, including Huíla and Cabinda. In apparently unrelated news, in June, the migration authorities expelled the coordinator of the eu’s Support Programme for Non-State Actors, though local observers remarked that the non-renewal of her visa was probably linked to meetings with the abovementioned ‘youth revolutionaries’. In a positive development, the youth activist Manuel Nito Alves – detained in 2013 for insulting the president – was acquitted by the tribunal for lack of evidence.

In October, an association of 15 ngos active in monitoring human rights said the situation had worsened “considerably”. Secretary of State for Human Rights António Bento Bembe accused the ngos of bad faith, saying they did not want to see the “visible progress” made by the Executive on human rights. Similarly, Angola’s passing of the Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights at the un in Geneva in October was hailed in state-owned news media as a great success and further proof of these advances, while more independent sources reported that the Angolan delegation had been “grilled” over the restrictions on free speech and public protest.

Even the Catholic Church, which had generally adopted a rather muted, conciliatory position since the end of the war, took a more vocal stance. In March, the president of the Bishops Conference (Conferência Episcopal de Angola e São-Tomé, ceast), Dom Gabriel Mbilingui, said democracy and pluralism in Angola left much to be desired, and throughout the year some church leaders spoke out against human rights abuses and poor socio-economic conditions. At its second plenary session in October, ceast also criticised the ‘dubious quality’ of public infrastructure works, which often remained uncompleted, and questioned the huge expenses incurred while the gap between poor and rich was growing. The plenary also criticised Canon Apolónio Graciano for his constant, enthusiastic public endorsement of the mpla, saying this had caused the church some embarrassment.

The government’s counter-insurgency campaign continued against the low-level separatist guerrillas of the ‘Frente para a Libertação da Enclave de Cabinda’ (flec) in the oil-rich Cabinda province. casa-ce deputy José Lelo said in February that the province was still experiencing a climate of war, citing armed confrontations between army units and flec in Buco Zau municipality, as well as the regular disappearance of citizens. unita also denounced an increase in serious human rights violations in the province, and claimed that, despite Defence Minister Lourenço’s announcement in October that the conflict had ended, political assassinations, arbitrary detentions, and restrictions on public demonstrations were on the rise.

Human rights violations at the hands of public and private security forces also continued in the diamond-producing areas of the Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul provinces. In March, local police killed seven artisanal miners, while various others ‘disappeared’ following a police operation in Saurimo. In September, an anonymous source within the state security services claimed a plan had been approved to assassinate José Mateus Zecamutchima, the president of the autonomist and regularly repressed ‘Movimento do Protectorado Lunda Tchokwe’, by staging a car accident or a burglary, though Zecamutchima himself said these plans were old. In December, a video was published on the internet, allegedly showing employees of the private security company K&P torturing two ‘illegal’ drc artisanal miners. One positive related development was that in May the mpla submitted a bill to parliament limiting the type of firearms that agents of private security companies were allowed to carry to small- and medium-calibre weapons, and requesting the carrying of licences issued by the police.

In October, the Institute of National Languages recommended the adoption of the Bantu spelling of place names with ‘k’ in preference to the Portuguese orthography with ‘c’, thereby taking a first step towards mitigating the confusion over the spelling of Angolan place names such as Kwanza-Sul (Cuanza Sul) and Kuando Kubango (Cuando Cubango).

Foreign Affairs

Overall, Western interest in investment opportunities increased, while Angolan diplomacy placed growing importance on South-South ties. Moreover, Angola successfully pursued its strategy to become a regional power broker. Angola’s election in October as non-permanent member of the unsc for the period of 2015–16 was clearly a fruit of these efforts, as was the higher visibility that Angola gained as chair of the icglr. Taking over the icglr chairmanship from Uganda in January, Angola publicly took a lead in the question of the disarmament by military force of armed rebel groups in eastern drc and said it would consider committing some of its own troops to regional peacekeeping operations there – though no decision had been made by the end of the year. Angola did, however, commit troops to the un military mission in the car in September, after granting $ 10 bn in support of Interim President Catherina Samba-Panza’s transitional government when she visited Luanda in March. The money, earmarked for the payment of public sector salaries, was then partially embezzled in the car, prompting much outrage there. By comparison, Angola’s commitment to sadc remained more ambivalent. In January, Minister of Commerce Rosa Pacavira said Angola’s accession to the sadc free exchange zone remained on the government’s agenda, though not before 2017, to give the country time to build up its own industrial capacity.

In bilateral terms, political and economic ties with Portugal continued to be among the most important, with Angolan investors strengthening their positions in the media, banking and construction sectors. With about 100,000 Portuguese economic migrants in Angola, bilateral ties were important, though strained by Portuguese investigations into the assets of Bento ‘Kangamba’ dos Santos.

Kangamba also remained under investigation in Brazil for procurement of prostitutes, though the arrest warrant issued in the previous year was suspended on payment of bail. Generally, however, relations remained strong, and fuelled by strong Brazilian commercial interests in the Angolan construction sector: following a state visit by dos Santos to Brazil, Angola’s other main Lusophone partner granted a $ 2 bn oil-backed credit line for the construction and energy sectors, which equalled the bilateral trade volume of the previous year. The other African Lusophone countries also remained priority partners, though not necessarily in economic terms. In July, Filipe Nyusi, presidential candidate of Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo party, visited Angola, to “drink from” the mpla’s experience. Angola also opened a $ 180 m credit line to nearby São Tomé e Príncipe, was “studying” investment opportunities in Cape Verde, and renewed ties with Guinea-Bissau following the election of a new government in June; relations had been strained following the 2012 coup there.

China remained one of Angola’s key foreign partners, with a bilateral trade volume of $ 37 bn, and Angola was China’s second-largest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia. In March, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce also created a legal and logistics assistance centre for the estimated 100,000 Chinese expatriates living in Angola. This was followed by a state visit in May by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, who donated 180 m Chinese yuan ($ 28 m) in support of economic diversification and signed a string of cooperation agreements, including on a geological survey of the country’s mineral resources. However, a report in July blamed complicity by Angolan officials in making Angola the second-largest exporter of illegal ivory, 95% of which was sold to Chinese clients. Foreign observers, as well as a few domestic activists, also noted with some concern the involvement of Angolan regime figures in Chinese private companies, which made their gains in commercial ventures funded by oil-backed credits to Angola.

In April, Angola overtook Nigeria as the us’s main Sub-Saharan supplier of oil, and in May, us Secretary of State John Kerry visited Angola as part of his Africa tour; he stressed that the us was not just there for business opportunities but wanted to establish a real partnership with Angola. In September, us General David Rodriguez, the commander of africom, also visited Angola with a view to reinforcing regional and maritime security cooperation.

In April, dos Santos made a two-day state visit to France, a clear signal that relations, strained by the ‘Angolagate’ scandal of the late 1990s, were on the mend, and indicative of heightened French interest in investment opportunities in Angola, which totalled € 10 bn. France was also the sixth-largest source of imports. Other European interests manifested elsewhere. In March, the Swedish Finance Minister recommended Angola to pension funds managers in his country as one of the most lucrative countries for investments. In November, Germany announced the signing of a defence cooperation agreement.

Regarding South-South cooperation, dos Santos visited Cuba in June, following his trip to Brazil, signing new agreements on cooperation in the health sectors and the training of cadres. A state visit to Angola by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet in August resulted in the creation of a bilateral economic cooperation commission.

Socioeconomic Developments

Oil production remained the main driver of economic growth, accounting for 70% of government revenue. However, despite public declarations that production would pick up again and be boosted to 2 m b/d in 2015, production levels fell in April to 1.54 m b/d. The government reacted by easing some local content restrictions, allowing, for example, French oil major Total to finalise its investment decision for a new offshore block in March. This, however, ran counter of union demands for increasing ‘Angolanisation’ of the workforce in the oil sector, and led to several shorter strikes. In May, production at the Angola liquefied natural gas project in Soyo had to be halted due to “a succession of technical faults”. It was announced that the plant would not start operating again before mid-2015, thereby further denting revenue projections from the sector.

As from June, world oil prices started falling, from around $ 100 per barrel to $ 78 in November, and then hitting $ 57.33 per barrel of Brent crude at year’s end. For the Angolan government, which in November had passed an expansionist budget for the coming year with revenue estimates based on a price of $ 81 per barrel, these developments came as a shock and forced the government to work on a revised 2015 budget at the end of the year. Already in March and April, foreign and domestic observers thus warned of the end of Angola’s ‘strong’ economic growth of the previous year, revising their forecasts down from the official target of 7.9% gdp growth to a more realistic 3.9%; in October, the government itself revised its growth forecast to 3.1.%.

In September, the government also reduced subsidies on fuel prices for the first time since 2010, thereby raising pump prices from 60 Angolan kwanza (aoa) to aoa 75 ($ 0.75) per litre of petrol, and from aoa 50 to aoa 60 ($ 0.60) per litre of diesel. Although fuel remained heavily subsidised until the end of the year, when the government announced further reductions in fuel subsidies, these price hikes de facto acted as a regressive income tax on lower-income Angolans, for whom transport costs made up a significant part of household budgets. Higher transport costs then also had a direct impact on the prices of food items, as significant parts of the population depended on the informal market for their supplies and their earnings, which in turn depended on shared taxis.

In addition to these downward pressures on the economy, social policies remained out of step with the population’s most pressing needs, which remained largely unaddressed. Even the oecd said in its May African Economic Outlook that Angola’s economic growth had not reached the population. The imposition in March of new import tariffs as high as 50% on non-essential goods was a further measure of this. Although allegedly intended to stimulate the replacement of imports by locally produced food and goods and thus to help diversify the national economy, the measure drove up consumer prices, thereby hitting the poorest parts of the population hardest. Local observers noted that these protectionist measures, rather than serving their stated purpose, would only end up benefiting entrenched economic interests that controlled the import of foodstuffs. Similarly, a ban on the import of cement was decreed, as the government judged domestic production sufficient for national demand, although “internal supply constraints” made the negotiation of exemptions necessary until mid-year.

Accordingly, in July, business consultants Mercer designated Luanda the world’s most expensive capital for expatriates for the second consecutive year. Angolan observers, however, noted that life was even more expensive and difficult for the local population, blaming the situation on political and economic power-holders who did not themselves feel the effects of these developments. In August, ‘Jornal de Angola’ reported a rise in armed crime in Luanda, with attackers targeting cars that were stuck in the ubiquitous traffic jams in the morning and evening rush hours.

The construction sector contributed about 9% of gdp, and was mainly driven by public investments in the construction of roads and public infrastructure projects. In August, a new bulk iron ore terminal was completed at the southern port of Lobito, coinciding with the completion of the rehabilitation of the Benguela railway line, (Caminho de Ferro de Benguela, cfb) connecting the ports and coastal cities of Lobito and Benguela with Luau, in Lunda Sul, 1,344 km east on the border with the drc. The upgrade to a wider Chinese gauge and heavy-duty rails linked the Angolan seaports to Katanga in the drc and the Zambian Copperbelt, thereby potentially reducing export distances for these minerals from the current 8,000 km, via South Africa, to under 2,000 km. However, as the connecting lines on the drc and Zambian side had not yet been completed, exports did not start until the end of the year. Moreover, although the rehabilitation of the line had been funded by public funds, three close confidantes of dos Santos – Vice President Vicente, and generals ‘Kopelipa’ and ‘Dino’ – expressed interest in acquiring the cfb as part of a planned privatisation of the lines. Minister of Transport Augusto da Silva Tomás reportedly opposed the plans, pushing for a fusion of the three railway lines as a national company, and the situation was still deadlocked at the end of the year.

The diamond industry also remained an important source of revenue, if not in terms of contributions to total gdp, then certainly in terms of enriching members of the ruling elite. In June, the government authorised the Israeli-Russian construction magnate Lev Leviev to sell Angolan diamonds directly abroad, thus raising potential revenues for Ascorp, a joint venture between Leviev and the state diamond mining company Endiama. Production levels stood at about 10 m carats, though the opening up of the Lulo concession in Lunda Norte and the Mundundo concession in Malange to prospecting was set to increase production levels further.

The banking sector was also expanding strongly, despite the failure of besa (see above), though the overexposure of the entire sector to both public debt and the booming housing sector led several ratings agencies to downgrade their sovereign ratings for Angola, pointing out the risk of the housing bubble bursting and further banks going bust. By the end of the year, however, no further non-performing loans had been uncovered in other banks. In December, the Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund, headed by the president’s son José Filomeno ‘Zénú’ de Sousa dos Santos, announced its first investment plans – two years after its creation with a starting capital of $ 5 bn and following international evaluations judging it “lacking in transparency”. $ 1.1 bn would be deposited in a fund that invested in energy, transport and industry in Subsaharan Africa, while $ 500 m would be invested in the hotel sector. Thus, any hopes that the Fund would contribute to job creation or help buffer the Angolan economy against oil price dependency were, for the moment, dashed.

The government finally managed to hold a national census, the country’s first since independence from Portugal in 1975 (the last census was carried out in 1970). According to the head of the National Institute of Statistics, the census covered 99% of the population, recording a total population of 24.3 m, of which the largest part (6.5 m) lived in the capital, Luanda. Nationwide, 62.3% of the population lived in urban environments, and there were slightly more women (52%) than men (48%). Nonetheless, local elections, as required by the Constitution were delayed again, at least until 2017.

Despite a $ 70 m agreement with the World Bank passed in January to strengthen primary education, substantial challenges were still facing the education sector. A radio debate in January was indicative: following the publication of an international university ranking, two Angolan university lecturers expressed their “indignation” at the fact that no Angolan university had made it into the top 100 African universities, especially as the Mozambican Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, “which in practical terms belongs to a country with less wealth than ours”, figured in the ranking. The third discussant, however, replied that this was exactly the problem of Angolan higher education, and that as long as study places and diplomas could be bought, theses were copied, and professors were unqualified to teach their subjects, the country could hardly achieve excellence. Primary and secondary education fared no better, with the national teachers’ union declaring the government’s 2002 education reform a failure and criticising the government’s investment in buildings rather than in human resources. In the province of Uíge, a July report by ‘Voice of America’ revealed that 398 non-existent ‘phantom’ teachers were on the payroll of the provincial directorate of education, ‘earning’ aoa 240 m ($ 2.4 m) in 2013. And a report in July noted that children in Luanda’s peripheral neighbourhoods were excluded from the formal education system for lack of birth certificates.

An Oxfam report ranked Angola among the world’s worst three countries in terms of food security, mainly because of the high cost of food and extreme price volatility. This was again due to entrenched economic interests that benefited from high import prices, as well as poor transport and trading infrastructures for domestic produce. Even the state-owned ‘Jornal de Angola’, not usually known for its critical perspective, reported that 80% of the agricultural produce of Soyo province was spoiled every year because of the lack of a viable market. In February, Tyikenga Heipute, the traditional chief of the Muhimba in Tômbwa, Namibe province, said his people were on the brink of death because of the shortage of water and food. fao nevertheless announced in February that Angola was on its way to attaining the mdg of halving hunger by 2015. Local ngos active in the area of community development, however, criticised the government for superficial and unsustainable measures to combat hunger.

In March, the newspaper ‘Agora’ reported that the unemployment and old-age benefits the mpla had promised to introduce in its 2012 electoral campaign had failed to materialise, and that no one was willing to speak openly about the issue, while in July Foreign Minister Chicoty restated the government’s intention to create 1 m new jobs by 2017, a 2012 electoral promise that so far had failed to materialise. Most people thus continued to combine formal and informal employment to make ends meet, working for example as salaried teachers or public functionaries, but importing clothes or consumer goods for resale from neighbouring Namibia or the drc, Europe, or China. Many also earned an income from the resale of water, given that over 50% of the population did not have regular access to clean water.

Also in March, Minister of Health José Van-Dúnem admitted that there were only 3,541 medical doctors in Angola, manifestly too few to provide the population with adequate services; many municipalities had only two doctors at their disposal. In the province of Huambo, for example, this translated into one physician for 16,000 inhabitants. Accordingly, malaria remained a major public health issue, and in March, who expressed concern that tb rates in Angola would continue to rise until 2017, given the government’s lack of success in fighting the spread of the disease and official admissions that 2013 had seen an 11% increase in cases. Infant mortality remained the highest among all Portuguese-speaking countries, at 167 per 1,000 births. Official sources also said 200,000 people were living with hiv/aids, though statistics remained unreliable, with officials giving a higher number of 300,000 for the previous year. Finally, in a bid to prevent the potential spread of Ebola (although no cases were registered) the Ministry of Health posted notices in public hospitals requesting that family members bring their own gloves and masks when collecting the bodies of their deceased relatives. This received the dry comment: ‘Our leaders only have Chanel gloves, and won’t give them’, perhaps fittingly as the 2014 budget only allocated 4.3% of spending to the health sector, a net decrease from the previous year.